MUSINGS ON LIFE, ART, WRITING, AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAUREN ALEXANDER-IRVING

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

﻿﻿Cultivating the Lifetime Habit of Art

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Time changed. It disappeared. Time went away. There isn't as much time as there used to be. I don't know, its magical, and kind of mystical. What happened to time? Everybody's always looking at a watch and saying, 'I gotta go! Gotta go!' It's all those time saving devices that are using up all the time. Somewhere, a lot of time is being saved and stashed away, for other people. -Herb Caen, quoted by Mark Powelson, "Citizen Caen", San Francisco Focus

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This photo was taken on a boat ride going down the Mississippi River during Mardis Gras. After enjoying the festivities, I parted with friends then travelled alone up the east coast to reunite with my father. Next, on to New York to rendezvous with another friend who in dim lit fern bars reminded me of Bogie. I bought him a fedora and we took a horse and carriage ride through Central Park with a bottle of champagne. After a few days, I waved goodbye to him in his fedora from aboard the SS Leonardo da Vinci docked in New York harbor. This grand ship would be the last Italian ocean liner to cross the North Atlantic. David Bowie was on board and I met Elizabeth Rightor who encouraged me to apply to the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in Aix-en-Provence http://labellelettre.blogspot.com/2012/01/still-life-of-fruit-bowl.html Later, I visited Le Mas Theotime, her home in Lourmarin, a provencal village located in the Vaucluse. The voyage on the SS Leonardo da Vinci took seven days from New York City to Naples, Italy. Being served three meals a day by handsome Italian waiters was a great way to begin the next year and a half of my first European adventure!

Finding My Way Back to Painting and Drawing

In 1998, I was visiting mother who had returned to Cathlamet after living an expatriate's life in the Loire Valley for ten years. One day in the mail I received my portfolio from 1976 when I attended the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in Aix-en-Provence. That first body of work of mine had been in storage in a Boston basement for two decades. Looking through this mildewy assortment of oil paintings, charcoal sketches of nude models, and Mont Saint-Victoire watercolor landscapes was the best gift I could have received at the time. It re-ignited my passion for painting and drawing that had been dormant for twenty years as I supported myself with a myriad of jobs while working on writing/photography projects whenever possible.

I grew up in Cathlamet, Washington on the Columbia River where there were no strip malls, condos, movie theatres, art museums or galleries. It was in this rural enviroment of natural beauty and wide open spaces that I began to develop my artistic skills.

In 2001, while working in the corporate world as a web content manager and technical product developer, I started painting and drawing again. In 2002, I was accepted into the MFA Painting Program at the San Francisco Art Institute.http://labellelettre.blogspot.com/2011/10/augury.html I was fortunate to have a Directed Study with Christopher Brown who emphasized the importance of developing good drawing skills.